


me & god (we don't get along)

by kitmarlowed



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: M/M, it doesn't however throw discernible plots at me but what ya gonna do?, this pairing writes itself, this show stole my life in five seconds flat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:32:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitmarlowed/pseuds/kitmarlowed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riario breathes, the steady rhythm of one who has no fear for his life or the lives of those he cares about, dreams incorruptible dreams and Leonardo wants to laugh, to bear the scars he wears across his own skin as marks of his corruption at the hands of the purest monster he’s ever known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	me & god (we don't get along)

**Author's Note:**

> for Ramona & Nurul, who cheered hard, and died again and again.

I.

They agree not to talk about it, it’s about the only thing they ever see the same way and if you ask him, he won’t answer, but the words - they reach the world sometimes.

Occasionally, yes, he’ll admit to one person that fine: he’s wanted this for a long time.

II.

He crowds Riario against the wall, as if this gives him control and it may be a slight victory but he feels better for it.

Riario presses a finger to Leo’s hip, sensitive skin, leans close, whispers, “what is it that you want, _artista_?” and Leo thinks that’s more difficult than asking what he fears because he’s human and alive; there is no one thing he wants. He laces his fingers through those at his hip and smiles, says, “just this moment, I want you.” and there’s no questions after that because they’ve danced this dance time and again.

III.

Zo and Nico, from as far as they can be away and still be close, look at him like he is mad. The mad artist title shifted from the voices of those who hold him in contempt, to his friends - and Zo’s jewish friend may have laughed that Zo has so few, Leo has even less.

He has Nico, Zo and Vanessa.

He will not try to summon up a name for what he has with the man who by rights ought lie dead at his feet. He will not try, they are not what they are. He does not care to think of it.

IV.

Looking back Leonardo agrees that yes, maybe people call him too many things. He’s Maestro, he’s Da Vinci, he’s sometimes boy and often Artista.

It’s that last that gets him though, but only from one - he’s never loved that title more than when Riario growls it at him - mingling amusement, respect, and simmering hatred into the three syllables. Every sound a careful, formulated shot and Leonardo’s heard him yell and fight against a gag but nothing beats the purr of that title when they meet, whenever they meet.

Mind you, Leo also thrills in the fact he discovers that you can draw a laugh from Riario with a blade, a glint in those pitch or golden eyes that says, do it, and it’s only a little blood and they both have pints of it. Leo gives him little scars - they heal fast.

In return Riario give bruises, he never asks to make him bleed, just watches him writhe out on the pleasure and pain with his head tilted and his breathing calm, steady, in awe.

Once, though, with Riario pressing kisses to the curve of Leo’s collarbone and the tease of teeth there, Leo had nodded - an agreement, go for it, and he hasn’t regretted it. Riario smiles against his skin, and bites hard.

 

When Riario stays, which is rare, they are who and what they are, he is always awake when Leo falls asleep, glinting eyes are the last things he sees along with that smile that says, inevitably you knew this.

When Leo wakes, though, he is always sleeping. And without the smile or the open eyes he looks hollow and cold, a different beauty, sad and lost. It’s a startling contrast and it makes Leo ache because it means that the smiles and the eyes are a lie he never saw through, a sadness runs through Riario - it’s catching. In these moments Leo fights the urge to wake the man, to force a smile, a laugh anything from him that lightens the sadness writ so clearly in his face and the set of his jaw.

When Riario wakes, sometimes a smile, others a shove and the fast gathering of clothes - leaving with no goodbye, Leonardo doesn’t ask it.

("What is it, that carves sorrow through you?" He doesn’t ask, say, breathe, think. Riario hears it anyway, he doesn’t answer.)

V.

“What’s next,” Leo says, and it isn’t a question but Riario answers anyway, fingers laced through each other's as they sit and watch the stars, says, “we’ll find out,” and hums a laugh, “when we find what both of us are looking for.”

“I’m the one with the quest,” says Leo, and Riario rolls his eyes, says, “yes, and I’m the one supposedly going with God.”

Leo gets up, and Riario laughs, stays put, Leo says: “let’s not start talking of God, Count, it ended so well last time.”

Riario lifts his shoulders, a fluid shrug, hands splayed and innocence painted all over him, says, “Our God’s are not the same.”

And there, just where Leo knew it had to be, is a slow, lazy smirk because Riario knows that Leo has no God, believes in no such divine being other than man and that Leo sees the form of man as key to knowledge. The forbidden fruit here is to admit it, to push Leo into admitting his atheism, forfeiting his very life. A reverse fall of Lucifer (he loves man more than God and God’s little soldier has no qualms in using this.)

He resists the temptation to bite, Riario does no such thing, pulls the atheist that Leo is close and lures him in with a spark in eyes that have no heaven in them, promise hellfire.

(Hellfire might not be a bad thing, afterall. A flame that leaves no mark.)

VI.

He knows that no one else knows, and this is comforting. He sees the secret keepers as they are, chained to the rocks and their livers are intact so who’s complaining?

Riario seems to fear nothing, as he tells his leaders, men he should answer to, that Florence is weakened and that thus they do not need him, let him focus his efforts on being the shadow on the heels of progress. Let him follow da Vinci to the Book of Leaves, the Vault of Heaven. The pleas remain written on his face when he returns from the Vatican, the Pope still calls him to whatever court he keeps. He says nothing to Leo about it, keeps his God and his state to himself and if he scratches a little harder, pulls with more force and grips more tightly than usual, Leo says nothing.

They will get further with silences than words, because they are who they are, alike yet diametrically opposed and to talk in moments where all they have is stretched taut and thin around them would shatter everything.

He pushes Riario down, holds him as he shakes himself apart and in these moments he thinks that maybe he could believe in God, because there’s a light, a pinprick in the darkness of Riario’s eyes that speaks volumes of trust, of hope, of a quiet begging, pleading with the universe to make him right, to prove to him there is a god almighty, that his Church, his holy home, is not a lie.

Leo’s need for control manifests in a need to cage and to protect (these are not the same things, he knows, to extrapolate control towards protect is a delicate and tenuous string, he will protect, he can control.)

 

VII.

He thinks that no matter where this leads them, the deaths they both shall suffer, inevitably apart in time, he will always remember the moment it became what it is. The moment, the shift, the catastrophe that caused a hatred to flicker and a mind to fall from high thinking to carnality. He’s never pretended to be above it, as a general rule, but before he’d never viewed an enemy as a potential lover.

The arm he throws to cage the Count in stays strong but the other - he allows his hand to fall against a shoulder, allows a sharp intake of breath to sway his resolve. He thinks back on it as Riario’s fault but it’s a lie - they both wanted this.

And Riario moves to meet him, hands never idle, moving from hip to waist to chest, tearing and scratching without care, with abandon and Leo feels more alive in this moment than he thinks he ever has before (the reason he’ll never forget, the bright light that etched the images into his eyelids).

Riario wastes no time, with carefully placed fingers, well pitched whispers, to tell him that regardless of their position, that Riario cannot easily move, that he is for want of any better word ‘trapped’, by no means makes him powerless. Pain lances up his side from the blade at the hollow above his hip, a shallow cut that promises more, a small but obvious press that says ‘you have no control, and never will’ and Leo smiles, a laugh bubbling out of him against his wishes, brings a hand down and knocks the blade away, whispers, “you don’t need that.”

He gets a nod and a bite to his throat in return and maybe his vision blurs, maybe the world stops for a second.

Maybe this is all he’s wanted for a very long time.

VIII.

“This cannot last,” Leo never says and Riario hears it anyway, smiles into the curve of Leo’s neck and bites, sucks a blood bruise for prosperity’s sake, and Leo gasps, moans, writhes, beneath Riario, the morning light phasing neither of them, lighting Riario’s dark eyes to gold.

“This cannot last,” Leo does not say, because of course he won’t, can’t bring himself to jinx it.

All things must fade from sight and mind, all bruises fade from skin, cuts heal and broken bones will mend. (He doesn’t for a moment wish they wouldn’t - isn’t a masochist, he tells himself, he tells himself.)

IX.

Leo bites down on his lip so hard he feels skin tear. Riario smiles, a hand to the wound at his shoulder, breathes, “don’t worry _artista_.” and Leo isn’t worried, he’s appalled at the blood that runs from Riario’s mouth, “what did they do to you?” he hisses.

“Nothing I didn’t see as a risk,” says Riario, pulling himself up against the stones, “I’m alright.”

And Leo doesn’t yell, he doesn’t shout that ‘no you’re not’ and ‘why follow people who do this to you’ because in Riario there is the sight of the wisest man but the blindness of the greatest crusader and it isn’t like he didn’t see this coming.

He moves closer, pulls at the shirt until he can see the shallow stab wound that, thankfully, has cut nothing that won’t heal, he tears and bundles up a section of his own shirt, presses it, holds.

“You could still bleed out,” Leo says and Riario laughs, says, “maybe bleeding out isn’t that bad, blood is life isn’t it?”

“You’re losing it, Girolamo,” Leo breathes, he presses harder, staunching what he can and watching as Riario smiles weak enough to break anyone’s heart.

“I’ve had worse than this, _artista_ ,” says Riario, placing a hand over Leo’s at his shoulder and Leo doesn’t say that people die from less.

Riario is resilient, he does not fall asleep, he does nothing more than grit his teeth and dig his nails into the dirt as Leo pulls the needle through his skin and fixes the wound as much he can.

When Leo wakes he is alone, and there’s opium missing from his stores. He finds the grace to laugh, ignores the bloodstains on his sheets.

X.

When he paints, sketches, sculpts, works, he feels a freedom akin to nothing else. Even when dark figures he doesn’t recognise plague his vision begging to be let out onto pages of diagrams, imaginings of the knowledge inside the Vault of Heaven, a dagger pierced through the heart of a man etched there in dark charcoal and splashed with the blood red of wine, it still feels free.

He doesn’t pretend to be a prophet, unconstrained by what he sees; does not think to tell the future, pen to paper and eyes closed. But the heart feels familiar, the dagger even more so and when he throws the pages on the fire they burn and leave no ash he feels the fear grip tight around his lungs - he gasps for air.

He rides for Rome and does not note, tries so hard to ignore the fact, that it feels like a pilgrimage.

XI.

“You don’t look so well signore,” says a man whose name he will forget if he ever asks it, and Leo’s answering smile has only a little of the edge he feels as he asks, “the Count Riario?”

“Still in Rome, last I heard,” and Leo nods, good, scatters coins at the man’s feet and leaves him.

The Vatican is not a difficult place to breach but this time his target is not the Pope; he remembers the window of Riario’s rooms, seeks it out among the many.

 

The count sleeps, blood seeping through the stitches in his shoulder, one arm flung out, holding a book in a limp hand, the other pulled in, cradled.

His downfall is swift from the heights of indifference to this fallible religion that rests beneath the sheet of Riario’s skin, that shines as light out of his eyes regardless of the impossibility - reduces Leonardo da Vinci to sentimental ideas that if these portents mean to harm him maybe he can stop it.

Riario breathes, the steady rhythm of one who has no fear for his life or the lives of those he cares about, dreams incorruptible dreams and Leonardo wants to laugh, to bear the scars he wears across his own skin as marks of his corruption at the hands of the purest monster he’s ever known.

 _you are beautiful when you sleep, he writes, you are always beautiful, it’s cruel. I see your shoulder is healing, please don’t pull the threads out, if you unravel what will become of me?_ He takes a breath and it feels stupid to form the words ‘i saw that you would be hurt, please be careful’ and settles instead for a plea:

_will you come back and light the darkness for me?_


End file.
